France by train

Rather than going the length and breadth of France it might be better to pick hops of 2 hours or so at max. If you are in Bayeux then Rennes is nearby, a great city to visit. You could also go to Vannes near the coast, or to Quimper. And on the way to Bayeux the city of Rouen is worth a 2 nite visit.

Billy gives good advice.
Don’t waste time traveling.
Slow down. Enjoy life wherever it is.

Make sure to download the SNCF connect app for the trains. VERY easy to use to buy tickets and plan your trip.

Four nights in Paris, 3 nights in Bayeux...how many nights more do you want to spend on this trip? That would be helpful to know. I don't know when you are going but remember the tapestry is in London right now. D-Day beaches are still there!

France is about the size of California. Try to picture covering that state in two weeks...the beaches (different in the north and south), the mountains (almost the whole length of Calif.), the large valleys, the foothills, the wine countries, the forests. Without trains (alas, poor California!), you would fly or drive from area to area. You would also spend a good 4 -5 days total moving around. In France your plan seems to be too broad.

2 nights in a place is one full day, and maybe a half day on arrival or departure, depending on train schedule. Take a look at what you want to see and do in a place to see if your stay there is long enough.

Trains in France to major areas are like spokes of a wheel, with Paris at the center. Travel between places without a return to Paris can work, or they often can be long and require a few transfers. (e.g. Bayeux to Sarlat). To me, the Dordogne (Sarlat) is more difficult to get to. Plus, it is hard to see the area without a car. I wouldn't travel to the Dordogne just to spend 2 days in Sarlat. It would work to return to Paris after Bayeux, change train stations, then go to Colmar (via Strasbourg). Back to Paris, a new train station, then Avignon. None of these train journeys will be long (if using a TGV train)

I would pick 2 or 3 areas to visit, including Paris. Take a look at a paper map of France and plan a clockwise or counterclockwise loop taking in, perhaps, Rouen, Bayeux, some part of Brittany (with Mont St Michel maybe), then the Loire Valley and back to Paris. Paris deserves more than three days (4 nights), so finish up with Paris.
e.g. (with two weeks, this is just a rough idea):
Day 1, arrive and stay first night in Paris. Sleep Paris
Day 2 and 3, go to Rouen by way of Giverny. Sleep Rouen 2 nights Or skip Giverny and straight to Rouen.
Day 4 and 5, From Rouen to Bayeux. Sleep Bayeux 2 nights
Day 6 From Bayeux to Mont St Michel. Sleep MSM 1 night (Or skip MSM and head straight to Loire Valley)
Day 7, 8, 9 Visit Amboise and some chateaux, wineries, etc). Sleep Amboise or Tours 3 nights (If MSM is skipped, this is Day 6, 7, 8.
Day 10, 11, 12, 13 Return to Paris for rest of stay. Sleep Paris (maybe day trip to Chartres or Versailles) (Or days 9-13 if mSM is skipped). Your time in Paris can be filled to the brim, there is so much to see and do there.
Day 14, fly home.

Or...Paris-Bayeux-Paris-Colmar-Paris-Avignon-Paris. This means a day taken up from Bayeux to Colmar and one from Colmar to Avignon.

I haven't checked the train options on this route as we usually drive. I do know trains are good from Paris to Giverny (if you would want to go there), and are very good from Paris to Rouen. Or Paris to Bayeux if you don't want Rouen. Also, good and fast from Paris to Strasbourg (Colmar is a short train ride beyond Strasbourg.) Avignon is also a fast ride from Paris.

Sorry this seems so disjointed. I think you should look at a map of all of France to see the distances involved. Don't underestimate your travel time. And don't chortchange Paris. Best of luck in your planning!

As Judy pointed out, traveling by train in France usually means routing back through Paris, which is historically the central hub of the train network.

For example, the suggested option of traveling to the Loire Valley (Amboise) from Bayeux requires at least two train transfers and takes between 5 to 6 hours. In many cases, it also means going through Paris, which requires changing train stations within the city.

A "reasonable travel plan" would be to stick to the western part of France: Normandy and Brittany. However, even within this region, the train network is strictly limited to mid-sized and large cities.

You can see the transit network maps for these regions below (PDF files):

Normandy Transit Map (called Nomad):

https://nomad.normandie.fr/sites/default/files/2025-09/2025_Plan_REGION_sans%20TC.pdf

Brittany Transit Map (called BreizhGo), located just south of Normandy:

https://media.breizhgo.bzh/breizhgo/media/2025-08/Carte_BzhGo_Region_Vdef.pdf?VersionId=1755067393309758

On both of these maps, most of the colored lines are actually bus routes. These are primarily designed for local commuters, school children, and college students, not for tourism.

Even if you could easily get to the Dordogne by train (which is not the case from Bayeux), you couldn't actually explore it without a car. The Dordogne Valley consists of nearly 1,000 small villages, most of which aren't even served by buses. So, you can skip the Dordogne. Even if you rented a car, you would need at least a week just to see a small part of it.

Pln, unfortunately the SNCF Connect app hasn't worked for a couple of weeks.

I have three trains booked and I was able to access the tickets, but no longer. There have been many reports on Trip Advisor about it.

Luckily you can put the website on your phone home page and book and access the tickets there.

My total trip time during my last trip to France was about 8-9 days. I stayed a total of 5 nights in Paris (before and after Bayeux) and 3 nights in Bayeux with tours to Mont-St-Michel and the D-day sites. It was my second trip to Paris and I felt I still didn't see everything.

My travel style is to concentrate on only one or two places and spend at least 3-4 nights in each place, rather than spreading myself thin over a large area for 1-2 nights per city.

I did the French Riviera on a different trip and stayed there for 5 nights.

I just believe it's tough to try to do an entire country in one trip and I never do that.

It’s not entirely true that train routes are entirely hub and spoke with Paris as the hub, though that is true for routes of fast trains (TGV). And you are picking far-flung sites - Bayeux, Avignon, Sarlat (which would be reached via Bordeaux) and possibly Colmar - that focus on Paris as central hub. Paris to Sarlat via Bordeaux is a particularly long travel day.

What compounds your problem of too much travel time is that you want to take in many “highlights” or tourist hot spots in a trip that looks like it is perhaps 2-1/2 weeks total (including your 4 days in Paris and 3 in Bayeux).

Consider spending some time with a map. Consider that ‘less may be more.’ Don’t try to see so many distant regions for just two or three nights (1 or 2 full days) each, broken up by long travel days.

Maybe concentrate on south and west from Paris, e.g., from Bayeux go to Brittany and/or the Loire for a week to 10 days and then back to Paris. Or east to just two or three regions relatively near one another like Champagne, Lorraine, Alsace and Burgundy - not all four. You can never do it all, and certainly not all at once.

For example, in 2023 we spent a month in France starting in Bordeaux (3 nights), followed by the Dordogne (8 nights), Nantes (2 nights), the Loire (7 nights), and finally into Paris via Chartres (2 nights) and Versailles (1 night) … with 4 planned nights in Paris at the end.

In 2025 we were in France 2-1/2 weeks. We started in Strasbourg (2 nights, plus 3 more in Alsace), then Dijon (2 nights), Burgundy (3), Lyon (3) and we finished in Paris (3).

If you like France, return another time and see new sights and old faves. Our two more recent trips were our third and fourth to France over a 26 year span.

Line others have said, a reasonable travel plan is difficult if we don't know how long you have planned for your trip. First off, if it's by train only then I would eliminate Sarlat from any consideration. Sarlat is nice but it is a base to see the entire Dordogne region which requires a car.

Hi, this might help a little. It’s a 3-week trip I did that had these focus areas.

1st week-Rouen to Loire Valley
2nd week - French Riviera
3rd week - eastern France from Colmar to Paris

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/our-combined-solo-couple-vacation-in-france-2019

I move locations often which I don’t recommend for the normal traveler, but it will give you an idea of the advantages of several locations near each other to minimize train time. As others mentioned, the main train lines are spokes from Paris.

We did a previous trip that was Normandy & Avignon ending in Paris and another one that came over from Italy to Annecy, Lyon and finished in Paris.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/tr-france-october-2025-bayeux-rouen-paris

This was my trip last October - Bayeux 5 nights, Rouen 2 , Paris 3.

Thanks to all. We have a much better idea on how to proceed now.